Stephen J. Lupker

Semantic Priming without Association: A Second Look.

It has long been known that a word (e.g., BUTTER) presented shortly after a related word (e.g., BREAD) can be processed more rapidly than when presented shortly after an unrelated word (e.g., TABLE). This phenomenon has come to be referred to as “semantic” priming. To this date, however, only I. Fischler (1977, Memory & Cognition, 5, 335–339) has provided any evidence that this phenomenon is semantically and not associatively based. In the present paper six studies were undertaken in an attempt to generalize Fischlers findings to tasks other than the simultaneous lexical decision task he used. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3 it was determined that semantic category relationships, in which the two words named members of the same semantic category (e.g., DOG-PIG) did little to facilitate naming of the second stimulus. In Experiments 4 and 6, it was determined that a semantic category relationship did nothing to augment the priming from associative relationships in naming and lexical decision tasks, respectively. However, in Experiment 5, in a replication of Fischlers results, semantic relatedness alone did produce priming in a lexical decision task. These results appear to indicate that the role of semantics in the priming process is somewhat limited. Further, these results also indicate that the amount of priming observed is somewhat task dependent. Implications for models of “semantic” priming are discussed.

Strategic Control in a Naming Task: Changing Routes or Changing Deadlines?

For fluent readers, reading appears to be an extremely automatized process. That is, while reading, both phonological and semantic information appear to become available to the reader essentially automatically. Experimental evidence validating this observation is relatively plentiful, with the most compelling evidence probably coming from interference tasks (Klein, 1964; Lupker, 1979; Rosinski, 1977; Stroop, 1935; see MacLeod, 1991, for a review) and masked priming tasks (Fowler, Wolfora\ Slade, & Tassinary, 1981; Hines, Czerwinski, Sawyer, & Dwyer, 1986; Marcel, 1983; Perfetti, Bell, & Delaney, 1988). In these tasks, the finding is that phonological and semantic information from an unattended and response-irrelevant word affects processing of the response-relevant aspects of a stimulus. In all instances, the argument is that because the word was either unattended or unavailable to consciousness , its influence must have been the result of automatic processing.

Effects of Polysemy in Lexical Decision and Naming: An Alternative to Lexical Access Accounts

The effects of polysemy (number of meanings) and word frequency were examined in lexical decision and naming tasks. Polysemy effects were observed in both tasks. In the lexical decision task, high- and low-frequency words produced identical polysemy effects. In the naming task, however, polysemy interacted with frequency, with polysemy effects being limited to low-frequency words. When degraded stimuli were used in both tasks, the interaction appeared not only in naming but also in lexical decision. Because stimulus degradation also produced an effect of spelling-sound regularity in the lexical decision task, the different relationships between polysemy and frequency appear to be due to whether responding was based primarily on orthographic or phonological codes. As such, the effects of polysemy seem to be due to the nature of task-specific processes. An explanation in terms of M. S. Seidenberg and J. L. McClellands (1989) and D. C. Plaut and J. L. McClellands (1993) parallel distributed processing models is proposed. One of the most fundamental issues in reading research is how a words meaning is derived from the processing of a visual input. Chumbley and Balota (1984) suggested that essentially all major models of word recognition, such as Mortons (1969) logogen model, Beckers (1980) verification model, and Forsters (1976) lexical search model, assume at least two processes are involved. The first is the process of accessing the lexicon and the second is the process of meaning determination. The verification model and the lexical search model assume that lexical access involves a sequential matching process between information extracted from the visual stimulus and lexical representations, with representations for higher frequency words checked first. The logogen model assumes differential threshold values for the lexical representations depending

Does jugde activate COURT? Transposed-letter similarity effects in masked associative priming

Transposed-letter (TL) nonwords (e.g.,jugde) can be easily misperceived as words, a fact that is somewhat inconsistent with the letter-position-coding schemes employed by most current models of visual word recognition. To examine this issue further, we conducted four masked semantic/associative priming experiments, using a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, the related primes could be words, TL-internal nonwords, or replacement-letter (RL) nonwords (e.g.,judge, jugde, orjudpe, respectively; the target would be COURT). Relative to an unrelated condition, masked TL-internal primes produced a significant semantic/associative priming effect, an effect that was only slightly smaller than the priming effect for word primes. No effect, however, was observed for RL-nonword primes. In Experiment 2, the TL-nonword primes were created by switching the two final letters of the primes (e.g.,judeg). The results again showed a semantic/associative priming effect for word primes, but not for TL-final nonword primes or for RL-nonword primes. Experiment 3 replicated the associative/semantic priming effect for TL-internal nonword primes, with, again, no effect for TL-final nonword primes. Finally, Experiment 4 again failed to yield a priming effect for TL-final nonword primes. The implications of these results for the choice of a letter-position-coding scheme in visual word recognition models are discussed.

Masked Inhibitory Priming in English: Evidence for Lexical Inhibition

Predictions derived from the interactive activation (IA) model were tested in 3 experiments using the masked priming technique in the lexical decision task. Experiment 1 showed a strong effect of prime lexicality: Classifications of target words were facilitated by orthographically related nonword primes (relative to unrelated nonword primes) but were inhibited by orthographically related word primes (relative to unrelated word primes). Experiment 2 confirmed IAs prediction that inhibitory priming effects are greater when the prime and target share a neighbor. Experiment 3 showed a minimal effect of target word neighborhood size (N) on inhibitory priming but a trend toward greater inhibition when nonword foils were high-N than when they were low-N. Simulations of 3 different versions of the IA model showed that the best fit to the data is produced when lexical inhibition is selective and when masking leads to reset of letter activities.

The impact of feedback semantics in visual word recognition: number-of-features effects in lexical decision and naming tasks.

The notion of feedback activation from semantics to both orthography and phonology has recently been used to explain a number of semantic effects in visual word recognition, including polysemy effects (Hino & Lupker, 1996; Pexman & Lupker, 1999) and synonym effects (Pecher, 2001). In the present research, we tested an account based on feedback activation by investigating a new semantic variable: number of features (NOF). Words with high NOF (e.g., LION) should activate richer semantic representations than do words with low NOF (e.g., LIME). As a result, the feedback activation from semantics to orthographic and phonological representations should be greater for high-NOF words, which should produce superior lexical decision task (LDT) and naming task performance. The predicted facilitory NOF effects were observed in both LDT and naming.

Input, Decision, and Response Factors in Picture-Word Interference

Two variations of the picture-word analogue of the Stroop task were examined in an effort to gain a better understanding of the processes involved in responding to picture-word stimuli. Four stages in this process were outlined and then evaluated as potential sources of the interference in these types of tasks. In Experiment 1 subjects were required to respond yes or no (vocally or manually) to whether the picture was that of a dog. In Experiment 2 subjects were asked to respond by naming the pictures semantic category. Taken together, the results of these experiments indicate that (a) input factors contribute very little to the interference observed, (b) in certain situations some of the interference is due to an interaction of the semantic information from the word and the picture during a decision process, and (c) the response selection and output processes account for most of the interference but only in situations in which the words name is potentially a response. Implications of these results for the study of automatic semantic processing of words are discussed.

Ambiguity and Synonymy Effects in Lexical Decision, Naming, and Semantic Categorization Tasks: Interactions Between Orthography, Phonology, and Semantics

In this article, ambiguity and synonymy effects were examined in lexical decision, naming, and semantic categorization tasks. Whereas the typical ambiguity advantage was observed in lexical decision and naming, an ambiguity disadvantage was observed in semantic categorization. In addition, a synonymy effect (slower latencies for words with many synonyms than for words with few synonyms) was observed in lexical decision and naming but not in semantic categorization. These results suggest that (a) an ambiguity disadvantage arises only when a task requires semantic processing, (b) the ambiguity advantage and the synonymy disadvantage in lexical decision and naming are due to semantic feedback, and (c) these effects are determined by the nature of the feedback relationships from semantics to

Transposed-letter effects : Consonants, vowels and letter frequency

There is now considerable evidence (e.g., Perea & Lupker, 2003a, 2003b) that transposed-letter nonword primes (e.g., jugde for JUDGE) are more effective primes than replacement-letter nonword primes (e.g., jupte for JUDGE). Recently, Perea and Lupker (2004) demonstrated that, in Spanish, this transposed-letter prime advantage exists only when the transposed letters are consonants (C-C transpositions) and not when they are vowels (V-V transpositions). This vowel-consonant difference causes problems even for models that can successfully explain transposed-letter effects (e.g., SOLAR, Davis, 1999). In Experiment 1 in the present paper, we demonstrated a parallel result in a language with a different syllabic structure (English) in both a masked priming experiment and an unprimed lexical decision task in which the transposed letter strings (e.g., ADACEMY, ACEDAMY) were used as the nonwords. Results in Experiment 2 suggest that at least part of the reason for the vowel-consonant difference is because of the higher letter frequencies of the vowels. Possible alternative interpretations of the vowel-consonant difference are discussed.

Picture Naming: An Investigation of the Nature of Categorical Priming

Although there are numerous theories of the structure of semantic memory, a notion central to many of these theories is that of semantic category membership. The present studies represent an investigation of the effects of a semantic category relation between prime and target in a picture-naming task. Because picture naming is presumed to require access to semantic memory, category priming effects were anticipated even when associative and phonetic effects were eliminated. This expectation was verified in Experiment 1. Experiments 2 and 3 were attempts to specify the nature and locus of this categorical priming effect. In particular, it was suggested that one locus would be an entry-level memory system for pictures. Results suggest that this system plays little role in categorical priming of picture naming. Rather, a better explanation would be one based on processing within semantic memory. The possibility of lexical memory acting as an additional locus is also considered. Since first reported in the early 1970s (Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971; Meyer, Schvaneveldt, & Ruddy, 1975), priming paradigms have been used to investigate a number of issues in cognitive psychology. In the more standard technique, two stimuli are presented sequentially. The initial, or prime stimulus is presented to create a particular context. A response may or may not be required. A second or target stimulus is then presented to which the subject must make a timed response. Empirically, the question being asked is whether the context created by the prime affects the speed of target